Perhaps you've noticed that I've missed my usual Monday morning blogging?
What's that? You didn't notice? Oh, well...
That's probably because you've all been reading my coding- and programming-related blog over at Incremental Code.
I've been blogging there daily, at 9am every day, covering the previous day. And while it started with a pretty narrow focus on the code, it has grown to include some of my thoughts and feelings about code. And since code is pretty much all I do these days, I haven't got a heck of a lot to say here. I mean, it's not like I'm watching a lot of movies or going out to a lot of bars or etc.
But that doesn't mean I'm abandoning this blog. Soon--very alarmingly soon, in fact--I will be done with the 12 weeks of MakerSquare, the intensive boot camp. Then I will stop my insane and bizarre habit of blogging every day over there. (Perhaps I will be able to cut myself back to twice a week.) I also hope to go see some movies and start doing some other things that aren't coding.
(Though, let's be honest, coding is really interesting, so I'll probably be doing a heck of a lot of that. And talking about it, either here or there.)
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Monday, October 20, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
Home, but soon away
Again, a boring little meta post to explain why I don't have a big critical post up about The Guardians of the Galaxy. (Short: it was fun, with some caveats.) I am now home--not my NY home, where my parents live and where I grew up, but my San Angelo home, with my girlfriend and dog.
And in a few weeks, I will be leaving his home for a few months, to take an immersive web development course in Austin. After debating about accommodations and sublets, I've decided to go with the simplest and most social option of staying in the DevHouse, the student-dorm-lite-like house owned by one of the founders of the program.
There's some definite down-sides to this choice--they don't allow pets, so if Sarah and the puppy come to visit, we'll have to find somewhere else to stay for a weekend; but since I have a wide stay-at-home/introvert streak, I wanted something that would combat that and make socializing (and late-night coding) an easy option.
Still, a nagging question: should I get a shower caddy?
And in a few weeks, I will be leaving his home for a few months, to take an immersive web development course in Austin. After debating about accommodations and sublets, I've decided to go with the simplest and most social option of staying in the DevHouse, the student-dorm-lite-like house owned by one of the founders of the program.
There's some definite down-sides to this choice--they don't allow pets, so if Sarah and the puppy come to visit, we'll have to find somewhere else to stay for a weekend; but since I have a wide stay-at-home/introvert streak, I wanted something that would combat that and make socializing (and late-night coding) an easy option.
Still, a nagging question: should I get a shower caddy?
Monday, August 4, 2014
Home, so...
I am home, which naturally both interrupts my blogging schedule, and, well, interrupts every other schedule I have.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
The Artist's Way and your way
I recently finished 12 weeks of following Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Well, impressionistically following it. For those of you who don't know it, Cameron's book is a self-help guide to reconnecting with your creative side. It's full of techniques and philosophy and some cuddling.
Which maybe makes me sound like I didn't like it. But again: impressionistically. There's a lot in this book, so there's plenty to pick and choose between. For instance, the spiritual talk isn't for me, exactly, but it's pretty easy to get around "God" and just insert "life" or "energy." And there are so many tasks and affirmations offered that you really can pick and choose the ones that resonate with you. Though sometimes it's interesting to pick the ones that resonate negatively just to see what comes up.
That said, the central technique in Cameron's book is writing morning pages--and I've had some fun with them.
I could go on, but I'd rather hear about your experience with this or other self-help books for creativity. Have you ever read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way or some other self-help book? Have you followed the prescriptions--literally or impressionistically? Has it helped?
Which maybe makes me sound like I didn't like it. But again: impressionistically. There's a lot in this book, so there's plenty to pick and choose between. For instance, the spiritual talk isn't for me, exactly, but it's pretty easy to get around "God" and just insert "life" or "energy." And there are so many tasks and affirmations offered that you really can pick and choose the ones that resonate with you. Though sometimes it's interesting to pick the ones that resonate negatively just to see what comes up.
That said, the central technique in Cameron's book is writing morning pages--and I've had some fun with them.
I could go on, but I'd rather hear about your experience with this or other self-help books for creativity. Have you ever read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way or some other self-help book? Have you followed the prescriptions--literally or impressionistically? Has it helped?
Friday, May 30, 2014
Everyone is funny and most jokes have been told
You know that old saying about how there are only a few plots in the world? And every story falls into one of those seven--or twelve--or twenty plots?
If you ever doubted that, you should look on Twitter when someone sets up a game for people to play. For instance, when the show @midnight asks people to come up with "dirty songs"; or when the Barnes & Noble Book Blog asks people to come up with "useless prequels"; or--whatever it is, just keep an eye on that game and that hashtag and you will see definite patterns forming.
I was reminded of this because the BN Book Blog did ask for #UselessPrequels and if you look now at Twitter (or on my Facebook page), you'll notice there are some definite patterns that form. And, frankly, there are some repetitions. So far, I've noticed
To be clear, I'm not immune from this; and there's not a lot of mystery here. Of course, when playing a game like this, you would (a) want to choose a well-known work, hence the overwhelming presence of high school classics and bestsellers (and, to a lesser extent, children's books); and (b) want the joke to be clear enough for the reader to recognize what you're joking about.
That not only limits your raw materials: Shakespeare is in, but Thomas Middleton is out--and if you have to look him up, then you're both proving my point and shouldn't feel bad since I had to look him up too. It also limits how far afield you can go: "Romeo & Rosaline" only works because (a) people read it in high school English and (b) people may have some memory that Romeo starts off the play being heartbroken about a different woman.
So, yes, the game is somewhat limited by these two, er, limits. But still, I was surprised not just by the patterns that formed, but by the duplicates that popped up. Which means... what, exactly?
Only that, as you'll notice with @midnight's games, some of the funniest entries are by both comedians and civilians; that the ability to turn a clever phrase or come up with some comparison or other is actually pretty widespread through the population (of Twitter users).
And that, if you want to make a living being funny or (cough cough) writing interesting things, you have to work a little harder than your average Twitterer. That you'll need to stretch your mind a little further and not just settle on the first joke you make; and that, if you're trying to do some longer piece of writing, keep in mind that these sort of clever ideas are cheap. Everyone can and will come up with 1983 as a joke; if you want to make it mean something, you're going to have to sit down and put in the work to make it.
If you ever doubted that, you should look on Twitter when someone sets up a game for people to play. For instance, when the show @midnight asks people to come up with "dirty songs"; or when the Barnes & Noble Book Blog asks people to come up with "useless prequels"; or--whatever it is, just keep an eye on that game and that hashtag and you will see definite patterns forming.
I was reminded of this because the BN Book Blog did ask for #UselessPrequels and if you look now at Twitter (or on my Facebook page), you'll notice there are some definite patterns that form. And, frankly, there are some repetitions. So far, I've noticed
- Number-related jokes:
- Fahrenheit 451 -> Fahrenheit 450
- 1984 -> 1983
- Slaugherhouse-5 -> Slaughterhouse-4
- Time-/Age-related jokes:
- Midsummer Night's Dream -> Midsummer Day's Nap
- No Country for Old Men -> No Country for Middle-Aged Men
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -> 11 PM in the Garden of Good and Evil
- Backstory-related jokes:
- Romeo & Juliet -> Romeo & Rosaline
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Planet
- Dr. No -> Pre-med Student No
- and so on.
To be clear, I'm not immune from this; and there's not a lot of mystery here. Of course, when playing a game like this, you would (a) want to choose a well-known work, hence the overwhelming presence of high school classics and bestsellers (and, to a lesser extent, children's books); and (b) want the joke to be clear enough for the reader to recognize what you're joking about.
That not only limits your raw materials: Shakespeare is in, but Thomas Middleton is out--and if you have to look him up, then you're both proving my point and shouldn't feel bad since I had to look him up too. It also limits how far afield you can go: "Romeo & Rosaline" only works because (a) people read it in high school English and (b) people may have some memory that Romeo starts off the play being heartbroken about a different woman.
So, yes, the game is somewhat limited by these two, er, limits. But still, I was surprised not just by the patterns that formed, but by the duplicates that popped up. Which means... what, exactly?
Only that, as you'll notice with @midnight's games, some of the funniest entries are by both comedians and civilians; that the ability to turn a clever phrase or come up with some comparison or other is actually pretty widespread through the population (of Twitter users).
And that, if you want to make a living being funny or (cough cough) writing interesting things, you have to work a little harder than your average Twitterer. That you'll need to stretch your mind a little further and not just settle on the first joke you make; and that, if you're trying to do some longer piece of writing, keep in mind that these sort of clever ideas are cheap. Everyone can and will come up with 1983 as a joke; if you want to make it mean something, you're going to have to sit down and put in the work to make it.
Monday, February 10, 2014
If you need help, ask the internet
The other day, while walking the dog, I heard my name--from my iPod. If you've ever had that experience, you know it can be a little odd, especially if what's playing is a podcast that often deals with occult and supernatural issues: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. In this case, I asked for Ken and Robin to tell us about some hidden gems in the film world. (They often talk about films they saw at film festivals, which doesn't help much, especially since I don't get very odd films in the single theater here.) So, Ken and Robin gave a list of films that are already out in some form that could get more play. Here's the list:
Robin's list:
Muk Gong (Battle of Wits / Battle of the Warriors)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (streaming on Netflix)
A Film With Me in It
Ken's list:
Absentia (streaming on Netflix)
Alien Raiders
Tomorrow at Dawn
Forbidden Quest (note: not the 2006 Korean film)
I've already watched and loved A Film With Me in It, a black comedy from Ireland about a pair of friends who are stuck in their lives--an actor who can't book a film, whose relationship with his girlfriend is falling apart, whose brother is paraplegic (or locked in or brain dead--it's unclear), and whose landlord is quite hostile and uninterested in fixing the decaying apartment; and a drunk screenwriter-wanna-be who also has a gambling problem. The film starts off small and depressingly realistic (or realistically depressing)--and then people start dying in hilarious and unusual ways. (Warning: a cute dog also dies.) And now these two inept people have to decide how to deal with all the deaths, leading to more black comedy.
But the lesson here is clear: with Twitter and email, it's easy to ask people for their thoughts or opinions on things.
The flip-side to that is, why not pitch a hand in if you can? So, I recently wrote a review for the website SF Signal (where I often read reviews and notes) and wrote a list/essay for Pornokitsch (where I always read the other posts).
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Change of schedule?
Usually I post on Mondays and Fridays, with the Library of America post on Sunday; but it looks like the LoA may be updating their Story of the Week on Monday, which is why there's no LoA tonight. But if I move LoA to Mondays, I might want to change my other post to Wednesday maybe. Maybe?
Friday, January 3, 2014
2013 Round-up, 2014 plans
I was going to write a whole post about 2013 and 2014, but I just spent the last two days fixing my laptop, so my brain is a little fried. So instead, here's some random data/observations about 2013:
- with the blog, I wrote as few as 14 posts a month or as many as 40 a month;
- I started three reading-related blog projects:
- a re-reading of Cordwainer Smith (not finished at 4 posts),
- a reading of Paolo Bacigalupi's short fiction (finished at 6 posts),
- and a reading of the Library of America's Story of the Week (208! posts and ongoing);
- I set and continued a twice-weekly blogging schedule that I like and will keep to;
- I started and stopped an audio fiction review--partly because I was too swamped with audio fiction and partly because I've become more interested in film and TV writing;
- I successfully completed NaNoWriMo for the first time;
- I wrote almost every day, except for the last few days of December when I decided to stop doing the Magic Spreadsheet method, but I learned a bunch about my average writing and my optimal writing condition;
- I went to WorldCon and went to Austin for the YA book fest;
- I audited a class on programming for games here, as well as doing an online course on Java.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Life is short, my RSS feed is long
In light of the upcoming shutdown of Google Reader (c'mon, Google, really?), I think it's a good time to make a few trims to my RSS feed. (This is especially on my mind now since just a few days of camping lead to a ballooning of unread items: I think I get somewhere between 150 and 200+ items a day.) Most of these cuts aren't very momentous--I'm not as plugged into gaming culture right now so Penny Arcade is often wasted on me--but there's one I want to comment on:
I'm cutting myself off from Andrew Sullivan. While his system of aggregation often highlights interesting items, that in no way makes up for having to slog through his biased opinions on material which he doesn't entirely understand. Others have so ably bullet-pointed his failings, so I don't really need to go through the list of the times he was wrong or his blinkers.
What really gets me about him is his inability to break the pattern: a topic comes up, Sullivan spouts off on it; many bloggers and dissenters point out where he is wrong, but Sullivan doubles down, often with the self-righteous patting-himself-on-the-back that goes along with his "I'm just telling it like it is" and his "your liberal orthodoxy can't hold me back, man"; eventually, a few weeks later, after someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates intervenes, Sullivan makes some sort of correction or apology, which often seems sincere if not self-congratulatory about being able to change his mind--wash, rinse, repeat. Whatever the topic is--race and IQ; terrorism; structural prejudice against women; the war in Iraq--Sullivan can be counted on to be wrong, but somehow find a way to cast himself as being on the right side throughout.
In short: he's a prick. If he had a bar stool rather than a blog, no one would listen to his mixture of pious self-regard and toadying for certain powers that be.
I'm cutting myself off from Andrew Sullivan. While his system of aggregation often highlights interesting items, that in no way makes up for having to slog through his biased opinions on material which he doesn't entirely understand. Others have so ably bullet-pointed his failings, so I don't really need to go through the list of the times he was wrong or his blinkers.
What really gets me about him is his inability to break the pattern: a topic comes up, Sullivan spouts off on it; many bloggers and dissenters point out where he is wrong, but Sullivan doubles down, often with the self-righteous patting-himself-on-the-back that goes along with his "I'm just telling it like it is" and his "your liberal orthodoxy can't hold me back, man"; eventually, a few weeks later, after someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates intervenes, Sullivan makes some sort of correction or apology, which often seems sincere if not self-congratulatory about being able to change his mind--wash, rinse, repeat. Whatever the topic is--race and IQ; terrorism; structural prejudice against women; the war in Iraq--Sullivan can be counted on to be wrong, but somehow find a way to cast himself as being on the right side throughout.
In short: he's a prick. If he had a bar stool rather than a blog, no one would listen to his mixture of pious self-regard and toadying for certain powers that be.
Monday, April 1, 2013
March Blogging Breakdown / April Blogging Planning
Once I added "blogging" to my calendar (and synced my calendar across my devices), it wasn't hard to keep up a schedule for March of Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday (at Voyager Comics Online), and Friday. And yet, since this is Monday, you can see that April's schedule is going to change again. Why? Partly because I've got a lot of other stuff I need to do and partly because some of March's posts were not as focused as I would have liked them to be.
So now:
Monday: Miscellaneous
Wednesday: at Voyager Comics Online
Friday: Audio fiction summary
So now:
Monday: Miscellaneous
Wednesday: at Voyager Comics Online
Friday: Audio fiction summary
Friday, March 1, 2013
February Blogging Breakdown
For the new year, I wanted to try blogging more, and February was an especially scheduled month. For comparison, January:
The discoveries from this are all pretty obvious--or would be to anyone smart--but I still had to do it to as an experiment to find them out: Blogging six days out of seven is slightly too much, but having a schedule does help keep one on track. So for March, I think I'll try out blogging on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday (at Voyager Comics Online), and Friday. Off to update the 2013 Resolution Spreadsheet.
- 31 days
- 17 posts on personal blog
- 14 posts about Sneakers
- 5 posts on Voyager Comics Online blog
- 7 total days without blogging (77%)
- 28 Days
- 20 posts on personal blog
- 4 in New New Thing
- 4 in overwatching
- 4 in Indy 4
- 3 in Rediscovering Cordwainer Smith
- 2 in media
- 2 in writerly
- 1 in podcasts
- 4 posts on Voyager Comics Online blog
- 4 total days without blogging (86%)
The discoveries from this are all pretty obvious--or would be to anyone smart--but I still had to do it to as an experiment to find them out: Blogging six days out of seven is slightly too much, but having a schedule does help keep one on track. So for March, I think I'll try out blogging on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday (at Voyager Comics Online), and Friday. Off to update the 2013 Resolution Spreadsheet.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Blog Hop; or Form Follows Fun!ction
Amy Gentry tagged me for this "getting to know you" Blog Hop, which seemed like a good idea at the time, for some or perhaps all of the following reasons:
What do you write about and why?
On my blog, I write about anything that catches my interest, which is often politics and media--or politics in media. I often leave a movie/put down a book/turn off the tv and ask myself, "What is the writer saying with that line? Why did the creators choose that?," etc.
(Digression: The two classes of people who are most interested in ferreting out the politics of works of art are a) English professors and students in grad school and b) conservatives who seem to take to heart Zhdanov's principle that all art should reflect the party line. I'll let you guess which class I fall into. (Or rather, which class I fell into and then fell out of, bruising myself on every hard surface along the way.))
So I might write about Colbert's irony and liberalism; nostalgia in James Bond; why Andrew Sullivan is wrong about ____ [fill in anything there, because he's probably wrong about it] and how his rhetoric trips him up; or, for a change of pace, what it's like to live in Texas or to co-write a sketch show while telecommuting from Texas. (Shorter version of that last issue: it's hard.)
I could come up with an argument about how aesthetics and political ethics are related, something like: the cultural imaginary is defined by entertainment, e.g., 24's presentation of the "torture interrogation vs. ticking time bomb" scenario is a powerful current in the American embrace of torture. That's true, I think, but it doesn't answer why I write about that particular nexus on this blog.
Why? I write mostly about politics in art because I've recently become interested in politics in the real world; I've always been interested in the narrative arts (and all art is narrative if you're wired the way I am, but that's another story*); and that this is one way to help me bridge the gap from my old interest in art to my new interest in politics.
*All art is narrative? In 2005, my girlfriend and I went to see an exhibit at the MCA in Chicago that featured some Dan Flavin light art. One work of Flavin's repeated the same light across almost an entire wall, until the rightmost light, where the pattern broke, and I laughed. My girlfriend asked why I was laughing and I pointed to the repeating pattern of light--"Setup"--and to the broken pattern--"Punchline." We're no longer together.
Where besides the blog do you write (and why)?
For love: Over the past year, I've been trying to get back into writing fiction, specifically short stories, usually science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Even when I write in other genres, I like a little fantastical element. For example, after reading several romance submissions in my writing critique group here in San Angelo, TX, I decided to write a paranormal romance, which was an interesting challenge: dragon-shape-shifter--easy; avoiding words that make me giggle in sex scenes--hard. (Hard! Oh.)
I tend towards speculative fiction rather than literary fiction because I find speculative fiction offers more potential scope, seriousness, and fun than literary fiction. It's surely unfair to judge all of literary fiction by the dregs found in university-affiliated reviews, but the world does not need another story about adultery, unhappy dude professors seduced by their nubile students, or the melancholy of going through a dead loved one's attic.
(Seriously: I used to read slush for Chicago Review and we kept count of overused tropes, among which melancholy professors and adultery featured prominently. Now I read slush for a science fiction and fantasy magazine and the quality is not worse.)
You might argue that "commercial fiction" or "genre fiction" shows slipshod sentence craft compared to lit fic--but you'd be wrong and I'd be glad to give you a suggested reading list of beautiful prose writers working in speculative genres.
I'm not saying that there's no good work being done in literary fiction these days. Have you read Jennifer Egan or Junot Diaz? (Oh wait, both of them play with speculative tropes, too.) I just have a certain amount of bile built up over years of hearing that X was normal and Y was the abnormal choice, whether that normal/abnormal pairing was white/color, male/female, hetero/homo, or realism/speculation.
To that end, surprise surprise, I'm more interested in fantasy quests where kingship and patriarchy are investigated and overturned rather than reinforced as the divine order. But what the hell, let's speculate: what would kingship look like if it really were reinforced by divine power? Hmmm...
I've also recently gotten into writing webcomics through no fault of my own. A few months ago, my college friend Chris Van Dyke drew a picture and asked for a story to go with it, and we just kept going after that. We finished a short short story, a full-issue fantasy about a dragon-slayer, and are working on an ongoing comic about a Franciscan monk lost in fairyland. I'm pretty proud of the work we have done so far, but I'd be happy to hear your opinion of the comics. Pretty nice, right?
For money:
For money, I write student guides for literature for Shmoop.com, which I like because they're a little irreverent; and I write Kirkus Reviews, though I'm not sure if I like that so much. Reviewing not-so-great self-published books feels kind of like kicking someone when they're down.
Your bio lists a lot of things you do besides writing. Are you a writer, a performer, or...
This question doesn't rally apply to me: right now, my bio is pretty simple. But there was a time when I lived in Chicago when I had a few other plates to spin. In fact, my last year in Chicago was focused on taking classes at the Second City, which were pretty amazing plates, the kind that I wouldn't mind re-spinning. (End of extended metaphor.) I went through the sketch-writing track (perhaps you've heard that since I talked about it endlessly on this blog) and the improv track.
And I highly advise everyone take improv classes sometime. Tina Fey makes all the points in Bossypants, which I'm sure you've read, Dear Reader; so I'll just note that I wish I had taken improv a long time ago. I'm not great at improv, but being great isn't really my goal. My (ongoing) goal is learning to listen to others, to say yes and collaborate with teammates, and to let go of past mistakes. Who wouldn't want that? (Also, I wish I had taken the Voice and Dialect class, just because.)
Unfortunately there's no improv community in San Angelo that I know of, and I've been dragging my feet about trying to put together some class or group here. You might think it's because I'm wholly unqualified, but really it's just because I'm bred-in-the-bone lazy.
I also really liked Second City for the friendships--Second City classes are great if you want to up your "happy birthday" count on Facebook. Also, I got together with a bunch of classmates to make a web video series about a hapless lawn care company. I wasn't as involved as I would have liked since I was busy moving to Texas during production; but I really enjoyed collaborating on the writing. Maybe I should get back into sketch-writing?
Also, wouldn't it be great to do a podcast? I have no further ideas on that, but wouldn't it be great?
Which authors do you find inspiring (for your current work)?
When it comes to authors and books, I'm one of those people who love not wisely, but too well. (Oh, god, is Shakespeare on my list? Put Shakespeare on the list.) So instead of the general list of favorite authors (Jane Austen forever!), I'll tell you who inspires my current work:
The webcomic Voyages owes a lot to Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse, in that I'm trying to write farce; and Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Jack Vance's Lyonesse, in that I'm trying to write episodic, non-epic fantasy. Maybe there's some Woody Allen in there as well.
For my current crop of fantasy stories, my guiding stars are Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose imagination was wide even with a focused point to make) and Ursula K. Le Guin (a didactic author who is never afraid to give the other side a fair shake); Fritz Leiber and William Gibson (for playing with prose); China Mieville and Kim Stanley Robinson (for their overturning of old tropes to show the structural undergirding of our fantasies); Nathanael West and Thomas Pynchon (for their playfulness with form and structure itself); and Theodore Sturgeon and James Tiptree, Jr. (for their sensibility, anger, mercy).
What is your writing process?
Oh, I want one of those--where can I get one? I don't have a lot to say about the "when do you sit down to write, what music do you put on?" sort of logistical questions. Which is a shame because I love logistics and especially am open to music suggestions. I usually sit down to write when I'm not walking the dog or washing the dishes, but I've yet to come up with a solid schedule for that.
Here's one logistical issue I can speak to very directly: I love Scrivener for Mac for multi-part projects; but I still have stacks of scrap paper with scribbled ideas. Over my life, I have consolidated those scraps several times, but they keep multiplying.
As for the planning vs. discovery writing divide (aka plotting vs. pantsing), I've flipped back and forth. If it's fiction, I often do a lot of planning, but those plans don't always survive the writing process. If it's non-fiction, I tend to write a bunch of thoughts and then outline when I know more what I want to say.
I'm also a big believer in rereading and revising until it hurts, but at some point you just have to let go, no matter how much you've grown to love the hurt. When I reread my college senior project--a book of short stories--I continually make marks to change stories; and each time, they're different marks.
What are some of the best books or advice for writing?
Okay, I added this question mostly because I wanted to hear what suggestions other people would drop. After moving from Chicago to Texas, I've lost some of the pleasures of book collecting; but I keep seeing interesting titles out there. For instance, Victoria Lynn Schmidt's 45 Master Characters and Nancy Kress's Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. I can't totally vouch for any of these books because collecting is easy, but reading takes time.
I can vouch for the podcast Writing Excuses, which I wrote a whole post about. They might not work for everyone, and I often find myself wanting to add or edit things they say, but it's a good start for people who want to get back into writing and find themselves listening to podcasts while walking the dog.
But right now I think my favorite writing advice is to write a note to yourself at the beginning of a project outlining what it is you like about the project. That way, when you start to lose interest about the halfway point, you have the letter to yourself to remind you why you started this project in the first place.
Enough about me. Here are some fantastic blogs you should check out:
The Oeditrix: Teacher and freelance journalist Amy Gentry posts extended interviews with authors (which are really just blog hops by a different name, right?) and succinct meditations on feminism
Give me a month or so, my brain is fried. and Seshet's Scribe: Pseudonymous pagan progressive and children's librarian Sesheta offers personal takes on religion, belief, and annoying family members on "Give me a month..."; and up-to-date reviews of books on "Seshet's Scribe"
Perfect Cursive: Screenwriter Christine McKeever offers personal reminiscences and music; learn the lesson she offers and don't get swept up by poker
Voyager Comics: Teacher Chris Van Dyke posts our webcomic and other drawings, including sketches and some meditations on process; hopefully this blog hop will get him to spill his secrets on drawing
- I've been intermittently blogging here for a while, but I never really introduced myself;
- I love self-replicating memes;
- Maybe answering these questions about current projects would get me to finish some of them?;
- As a narcissist, I enjoy talking about myself;
- and answering questions about writing sure beats writing.
What do you write about and why?
On my blog, I write about anything that catches my interest, which is often politics and media--or politics in media. I often leave a movie/put down a book/turn off the tv and ask myself, "What is the writer saying with that line? Why did the creators choose that?," etc.
(Digression: The two classes of people who are most interested in ferreting out the politics of works of art are a) English professors and students in grad school and b) conservatives who seem to take to heart Zhdanov's principle that all art should reflect the party line. I'll let you guess which class I fall into. (Or rather, which class I fell into and then fell out of, bruising myself on every hard surface along the way.))
So I might write about Colbert's irony and liberalism; nostalgia in James Bond; why Andrew Sullivan is wrong about ____ [fill in anything there, because he's probably wrong about it] and how his rhetoric trips him up; or, for a change of pace, what it's like to live in Texas or to co-write a sketch show while telecommuting from Texas. (Shorter version of that last issue: it's hard.)
I could come up with an argument about how aesthetics and political ethics are related, something like: the cultural imaginary is defined by entertainment, e.g., 24's presentation of the "torture interrogation vs. ticking time bomb" scenario is a powerful current in the American embrace of torture. That's true, I think, but it doesn't answer why I write about that particular nexus on this blog.
Why? I write mostly about politics in art because I've recently become interested in politics in the real world; I've always been interested in the narrative arts (and all art is narrative if you're wired the way I am, but that's another story*); and that this is one way to help me bridge the gap from my old interest in art to my new interest in politics.
*All art is narrative? In 2005, my girlfriend and I went to see an exhibit at the MCA in Chicago that featured some Dan Flavin light art. One work of Flavin's repeated the same light across almost an entire wall, until the rightmost light, where the pattern broke, and I laughed. My girlfriend asked why I was laughing and I pointed to the repeating pattern of light--"Setup"--and to the broken pattern--"Punchline." We're no longer together.
Where besides the blog do you write (and why)?
For love: Over the past year, I've been trying to get back into writing fiction, specifically short stories, usually science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Even when I write in other genres, I like a little fantastical element. For example, after reading several romance submissions in my writing critique group here in San Angelo, TX, I decided to write a paranormal romance, which was an interesting challenge: dragon-shape-shifter--easy; avoiding words that make me giggle in sex scenes--hard. (Hard! Oh.)
I tend towards speculative fiction rather than literary fiction because I find speculative fiction offers more potential scope, seriousness, and fun than literary fiction. It's surely unfair to judge all of literary fiction by the dregs found in university-affiliated reviews, but the world does not need another story about adultery, unhappy dude professors seduced by their nubile students, or the melancholy of going through a dead loved one's attic.
(Seriously: I used to read slush for Chicago Review and we kept count of overused tropes, among which melancholy professors and adultery featured prominently. Now I read slush for a science fiction and fantasy magazine and the quality is not worse.)
You might argue that "commercial fiction" or "genre fiction" shows slipshod sentence craft compared to lit fic--but you'd be wrong and I'd be glad to give you a suggested reading list of beautiful prose writers working in speculative genres.
I'm not saying that there's no good work being done in literary fiction these days. Have you read Jennifer Egan or Junot Diaz? (Oh wait, both of them play with speculative tropes, too.) I just have a certain amount of bile built up over years of hearing that X was normal and Y was the abnormal choice, whether that normal/abnormal pairing was white/color, male/female, hetero/homo, or realism/speculation.
To that end, surprise surprise, I'm more interested in fantasy quests where kingship and patriarchy are investigated and overturned rather than reinforced as the divine order. But what the hell, let's speculate: what would kingship look like if it really were reinforced by divine power? Hmmm...
I've also recently gotten into writing webcomics through no fault of my own. A few months ago, my college friend Chris Van Dyke drew a picture and asked for a story to go with it, and we just kept going after that. We finished a short short story, a full-issue fantasy about a dragon-slayer, and are working on an ongoing comic about a Franciscan monk lost in fairyland. I'm pretty proud of the work we have done so far, but I'd be happy to hear your opinion of the comics. Pretty nice, right?
For money:
For money, I write student guides for literature for Shmoop.com, which I like because they're a little irreverent; and I write Kirkus Reviews, though I'm not sure if I like that so much. Reviewing not-so-great self-published books feels kind of like kicking someone when they're down.
Your bio lists a lot of things you do besides writing. Are you a writer, a performer, or...
This question doesn't rally apply to me: right now, my bio is pretty simple. But there was a time when I lived in Chicago when I had a few other plates to spin. In fact, my last year in Chicago was focused on taking classes at the Second City, which were pretty amazing plates, the kind that I wouldn't mind re-spinning. (End of extended metaphor.) I went through the sketch-writing track (perhaps you've heard that since I talked about it endlessly on this blog) and the improv track.
And I highly advise everyone take improv classes sometime. Tina Fey makes all the points in Bossypants, which I'm sure you've read, Dear Reader; so I'll just note that I wish I had taken improv a long time ago. I'm not great at improv, but being great isn't really my goal. My (ongoing) goal is learning to listen to others, to say yes and collaborate with teammates, and to let go of past mistakes. Who wouldn't want that? (Also, I wish I had taken the Voice and Dialect class, just because.)
Unfortunately there's no improv community in San Angelo that I know of, and I've been dragging my feet about trying to put together some class or group here. You might think it's because I'm wholly unqualified, but really it's just because I'm bred-in-the-bone lazy.
I also really liked Second City for the friendships--Second City classes are great if you want to up your "happy birthday" count on Facebook. Also, I got together with a bunch of classmates to make a web video series about a hapless lawn care company. I wasn't as involved as I would have liked since I was busy moving to Texas during production; but I really enjoyed collaborating on the writing. Maybe I should get back into sketch-writing?
Also, wouldn't it be great to do a podcast? I have no further ideas on that, but wouldn't it be great?
Which authors do you find inspiring (for your current work)?
When it comes to authors and books, I'm one of those people who love not wisely, but too well. (Oh, god, is Shakespeare on my list? Put Shakespeare on the list.) So instead of the general list of favorite authors (Jane Austen forever!), I'll tell you who inspires my current work:
The webcomic Voyages owes a lot to Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse, in that I'm trying to write farce; and Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Jack Vance's Lyonesse, in that I'm trying to write episodic, non-epic fantasy. Maybe there's some Woody Allen in there as well.
For my current crop of fantasy stories, my guiding stars are Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose imagination was wide even with a focused point to make) and Ursula K. Le Guin (a didactic author who is never afraid to give the other side a fair shake); Fritz Leiber and William Gibson (for playing with prose); China Mieville and Kim Stanley Robinson (for their overturning of old tropes to show the structural undergirding of our fantasies); Nathanael West and Thomas Pynchon (for their playfulness with form and structure itself); and Theodore Sturgeon and James Tiptree, Jr. (for their sensibility, anger, mercy).
What is your writing process?
Oh, I want one of those--where can I get one? I don't have a lot to say about the "when do you sit down to write, what music do you put on?" sort of logistical questions. Which is a shame because I love logistics and especially am open to music suggestions. I usually sit down to write when I'm not walking the dog or washing the dishes, but I've yet to come up with a solid schedule for that.
Here's one logistical issue I can speak to very directly: I love Scrivener for Mac for multi-part projects; but I still have stacks of scrap paper with scribbled ideas. Over my life, I have consolidated those scraps several times, but they keep multiplying.
As for the planning vs. discovery writing divide (aka plotting vs. pantsing), I've flipped back and forth. If it's fiction, I often do a lot of planning, but those plans don't always survive the writing process. If it's non-fiction, I tend to write a bunch of thoughts and then outline when I know more what I want to say.
I'm also a big believer in rereading and revising until it hurts, but at some point you just have to let go, no matter how much you've grown to love the hurt. When I reread my college senior project--a book of short stories--I continually make marks to change stories; and each time, they're different marks.
What are some of the best books or advice for writing?
Okay, I added this question mostly because I wanted to hear what suggestions other people would drop. After moving from Chicago to Texas, I've lost some of the pleasures of book collecting; but I keep seeing interesting titles out there. For instance, Victoria Lynn Schmidt's 45 Master Characters and Nancy Kress's Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. I can't totally vouch for any of these books because collecting is easy, but reading takes time.
I can vouch for the podcast Writing Excuses, which I wrote a whole post about. They might not work for everyone, and I often find myself wanting to add or edit things they say, but it's a good start for people who want to get back into writing and find themselves listening to podcasts while walking the dog.
But right now I think my favorite writing advice is to write a note to yourself at the beginning of a project outlining what it is you like about the project. That way, when you start to lose interest about the halfway point, you have the letter to yourself to remind you why you started this project in the first place.
Enough about me. Here are some fantastic blogs you should check out:
The Oeditrix: Teacher and freelance journalist Amy Gentry posts extended interviews with authors (which are really just blog hops by a different name, right?) and succinct meditations on feminism
Give me a month or so, my brain is fried. and Seshet's Scribe: Pseudonymous pagan progressive and children's librarian Sesheta offers personal takes on religion, belief, and annoying family members on "Give me a month..."; and up-to-date reviews of books on "Seshet's Scribe"
Perfect Cursive: Screenwriter Christine McKeever offers personal reminiscences and music; learn the lesson she offers and don't get swept up by poker
Voyager Comics: Teacher Chris Van Dyke posts our webcomic and other drawings, including sketches and some meditations on process; hopefully this blog hop will get him to spill his secrets on drawing
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Super Short Review (and programming note): An Affair to Remember
Sarah and I started An Affair to Remember around Valentine's Day and we just finished it recently. That should be a clear indication that it's not exactly riveting, which is interesting because the plot is straightforward and doesn't meander at all: playboy meets girl on boat, they fall in love, they break up with their respective s.o.'s, some obstacle gets in the way of their happiness, the obstacle is resolved. It's such a clean plot. And yet, very boring.
Maybe it's one of those cases of success breeding failure: An Affair to Remember may have been so big that we've absorbed it in different forms. It's like the problem of seeing Tolkien as just ripping off D&D and other fantasies.
The best parts of the movie were those authentically weird historical moments--Deborah Kerr gets a job as a chorus teacher and, after being thanked by a mug for helping his son not be such a mug, she leads her kids in a song about listening to your conscience. The song is punctuated by a little tap dancing from the black kids in the chorus.
(Also, there's one great moment, though it's dragged on too long, where Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are making eyes at each other and at their s.o.'s when they dock; all we get is medium close-ups on them until we pull out and get a shot of all the other travelers watching this byplay as well. It's the most interesting sequence about who sees whom.)
Lastly, a programming note: I've got some family coming this weekend, so updating may be unreliable.
Maybe it's one of those cases of success breeding failure: An Affair to Remember may have been so big that we've absorbed it in different forms. It's like the problem of seeing Tolkien as just ripping off D&D and other fantasies.
The best parts of the movie were those authentically weird historical moments--Deborah Kerr gets a job as a chorus teacher and, after being thanked by a mug for helping his son not be such a mug, she leads her kids in a song about listening to your conscience. The song is punctuated by a little tap dancing from the black kids in the chorus.
(Also, there's one great moment, though it's dragged on too long, where Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are making eyes at each other and at their s.o.'s when they dock; all we get is medium close-ups on them until we pull out and get a shot of all the other travelers watching this byplay as well. It's the most interesting sequence about who sees whom.)
Lastly, a programming note: I've got some family coming this weekend, so updating may be unreliable.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
January blogging recap
I made a deal with my friend Adrianne to blog every other day in January, partly to keep myself writing, partly to get her to write. (No pressure, Adrianne, but I enjoy your writing very much.) So, how did I do--and what did I write about?
Out of 31 days, 18 posts.
Of 18 posts, posts on:
It's also curious to me that the best days for blogging are Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. I don't know what I was doing on Saturdays that kept me from blogging, but I clearly felt bad about it on Sunday. (Or, more likely, I wrote out some of a post on Saturday night and then posted it on Sunday.)
The real mystery isn't Sunday or Tuesday--it seems clear that I missed Sunday and Monday, thus making me feel like I should post on Sunday and Tuesday. But what's with Friday? Anticipatory guilt?
Anyway, now that we're in February, I hope to write less about sketch comedy and more about other things, like politics (feh) and hobbies (meh) and secret personal histories (weh). What will you be up to in February?
Out of 31 days, 18 posts.
Of 18 posts, posts on:
- Sketch comedy: 6
- Politics: 4
- Texas: 2
- Meta: 2
- Writing: 2
- Podcasts: 1
- Movies: 1
- Sunday: 4/5
- Monday: 1/5
- Tuesday: 5/5
- Wednesday: 2/4
- Thursday: 2/4
- Friday: 4/4
- Saturday: 0/4
It's also curious to me that the best days for blogging are Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. I don't know what I was doing on Saturdays that kept me from blogging, but I clearly felt bad about it on Sunday. (Or, more likely, I wrote out some of a post on Saturday night and then posted it on Sunday.)
The real mystery isn't Sunday or Tuesday--it seems clear that I missed Sunday and Monday, thus making me feel like I should post on Sunday and Tuesday. But what's with Friday? Anticipatory guilt?
Anyway, now that we're in February, I hope to write less about sketch comedy and more about other things, like politics (feh) and hobbies (meh) and secret personal histories (weh). What will you be up to in February?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
So many things to talk about!
I've felt this way before--I've felt that I had lots of topics that I wanted to cover on my blog--and it's fizzled out in the past. I make up lists of possible topics; I pepper old posts with promises that the next post will cover topic X; and then... nothing.
But this time I mean it! Upcoming post topics include
- something on Florida probably;
- a recap of January's blogging, along with a secret or not-so-secret pact;
- a penultimate comment on what I learned turning sketches on paper into sketches in the real world (hopefully with accompanying video)...;
- to be followed much later by a final comment on the show and future writing-related plans;
- a recap of my trip to Chicago;
- and possibly more! Or less! Let's not commit ourselves too early.
But tomorrow we'll get back to real blogging. Or ersatz blogging. We'll see.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Blue sky (or, Just taking up space)
But every once in a while, I do have my phone with me--though never my camera. (Let's be honest, for a certain portion of the population, separate "cameras" don't exist anymore. This obviously doesn't include people who attended the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies or paparazzi; but for people who used to use point-and-shoot cameras, the phone camera has pretty well replaced that. True or false?)
Anyway, in case you were more interested in natural rather than built or anthropological environment, here is a tree, denuded of much of its leaves, in front of a blue-blue-blue sky, which is mostly what we have here.
How does this make you feel?
It makes me thirsty. (But, to be honest, I'm posting this because a) I want to try out Picasa's blogging function and b) I'm getting ready for my trip to Chicago.)
Monday, November 7, 2011
Excuse(s) my absence
Hello, uh, world!
I haven't been posting a lot here recently because I've been very busy moving down to San Angelo, TX (for girlfriend-related work reasons).
But I'm just about all settled in, so it's time to relaunch the blog and get into more of a schedule, including some posts about what it's like moving from Chicago to Texas. More on that, as the newspeople say, as it develops.
I haven't been posting a lot here recently because I've been very busy moving down to San Angelo, TX (for girlfriend-related work reasons).
But I'm just about all settled in, so it's time to relaunch the blog and get into more of a schedule, including some posts about what it's like moving from Chicago to Texas. More on that, as the newspeople say, as it develops.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
"That which we call progress is this storm."
--Walter Benjamin.I'd like to promise that I'm done quoting Walter Benjamin, but I'd hate to start this relationship with a lie.
I've stolen the subtitle of this blog--"Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe..."--from Walter Benjamin's essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History," from the short ninth section concerning Paul Klee's Angelus Novus.
For Benjamin, the Angel can see only the past while moving inexorably towards the future. The Angel can't stop as he's being propelled by a storm (not pictured); and though the Angel wishes to stay and fix the world (which is also not pictured in this drawing), he can only watch the slowly unfolding car crash that we call history.
But the Angel has one advantage over most of us folk: whereas we not only move into the future without looking, but mostly keep our eyes firmly shut on the past as well, the Angel can at least see the connective thread of the past.
I'm no angel--I'm not even particularly sure that I'm on the side of the angels. But I'm starting this blog to try to narrate to myself some issues about history, about politics, and about the stories we tell ourselves about history and politics.
Or to be less grandiose, I'm starting this to keep myself looking for answers in a world that seems continually and/or increasingly catastrophic.
Boy, that still sounds grandiose. Well, let's see what we've got after a week of posts every day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)